In this introductory episode, Winter and Lee Redd discuss:
- Who we are
- Why we are doing this podcast
- And how to find the Still A Part of Us podcast
Disclosure: Some of the links within these show notes are affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, we will earn a commission, which helps support our show. This commission comes at no additional cost to you, our wonderful listener!
Full transcription:
Welcome:
Lee 0:04
Welcome to Still A Part of Us, a podcast about stillbirth and infant loss. I’m Lee.
Winter 0:10
And I’m Winter. And today we’re going to introduce ourselves, we’re going to introduce our podcast, Still A Part of Us, our whys, what we hope to achieve with this podcast, and how to support and find our show. So let’s get started.
Hello, Lee.
Lee 0:29
Hello, Winter. How are you today?
Winter 0:31
I’m good. How are you doing?
Lee 0:33
I’m doing okay. I’m doing okay.
Winter 0:34
Good. We’re, we’ve got a goal today. We’ve got to talk about our podcast.
We first wanted to tell you a little bit about why we’re doing this podcast. Well, actually, we need to introduce ourselves, right? Let’s talk a little bit about ourselves, who we are, why you should listen to us. And then we’ll segue into why this podcast, why–why in the world are we doing this podcast? Do you want to start out, Lee, or should I start out?
Introduction of the hosts:
Lee 1:00
I’ll start out. My name is Lee.
Winter 1:02
Hey Lee!
Lee 1:03
Hello. I am a husband and father to two–
Winter 1:07
–you’re my husband. I just want to point that out.
Lee 1:10
That’s a good point out.
Winter 1:12
You’re not anybody else’s husband. You’re my husband.
Lee 1:15
Well, you do claim me. And we have two children. We have a daughter and then we have a son named Brannan. Myself, I love many things. I’m a lover of soccer. I love food. I am a chef. And I have a small business at the farmers market making what’s called eggettes.
Winter 1:38
They’re like Hong Kong bubble waffles, if you know what those are.
Lee 1:40
They’re custard waffle bubble waffles. Yeah. I have facial hair. And I quite love my facial hair.
Winter 1:48
He does. It’s good facial hair.
Lee 1:49
Well, thank you. I do not like the hot weather. And I do not like wasps. Those are, those are two things I detest.
Winter 2:03
Yeah. He doesn’t really love celery either, everybody. But he hates wasps. Wasps. Sorry, guys. That was rough. And he doesn’t like hot weather very much at all.
Lee 2:12
Winter, tell us about yourself.
Winter 2:15
So I’m Winter Redd. And my husband is Lee, who just introduced himself. And so of course, I’m the mother of two as well. And you’ll, we’ll talk a little bit more about them in a little bit. But I am a pharmacist during the day, and I enjoy it very much. I do research studies and I really enjoy it. I also podcast in other locations, including Hungry Squared, which is a podcast about food, because we’re food people. Lee is our editor on that one. He will be an occasional guest host. But most of the time, he’s the backend guy and helps out with that. So I appreciate that, Lee.
Lee 2:47
You’re welcome.
Winter 2:58
And I really like to just hang out with my family. I love also just writing. I love podcasting. I love, yeah, those are kind of the main things. I love gardening. I’ve kind of gotten into succulents lately. I don’t know why, but I just have. So…
Lee 3:08
She’s also very good at photography. She’s humble about that. But…
Winter 3:22
Oh, you’re very nice, Lee. And I do love to bake. Lee is the chef in the family. I am the baker in the family. Lee is rubbish at baking…[laughing] he’s not rubbish. He can make a couple of things pretty well.
Lee 3:28
I don’t have the patience for baking.
Winter 3:30
That might be it. Anyway, so that is a little bit about us. We actually live in the greater Salt Lake area of Utah. That’s just a little bit about us and who we are and what we like to do.
Why this podcast?
Lee mentioned that we have two children. We have a daughter. She’s four years old, and we had a son, and his name is Brannan and he was stillborn. He was a late term stillbirth last year in July of 2018. And this brings us to why we’re doing this podcast.
Lee 4:00
I would like to add, Winter has been instrumental in bringing me to this podcast. She has a internal desire to bring awareness to the world about this subject.
And some of the reasons why I am on the podcast–and I’ll let Winter talk about her reasons–some of my reasons are, especially when we’re talking with other parents who have experienced loss, be it stillbirth or infant loss, I have an inner feeling of connection with them, knowing that I am not alone. And that’s been one of the biggest support to me in these times of, of hurt for myself, is being able to connect with others who I know, I’ve also experienced this. It’s a wonderful connection, even though it’s a sad connection.
Another thing I don’t want to—sometimes when I’m talking with other parents about our children, yes, we have two children, one of them is with us and one of them is not with us. And sometimes bringing that up brings feelings of pity or feelings of patronization. Or I don’t ever want to feel that I am ashamed to bring up my son even though he’s passed away. And so having this dialogue where I can talk about my son, and other fathers and mothers can talk about their children, where it’s not a pity party or a, I don’t know, a shameful event. I think that will help us as well.
And then another reason, it’s also been helpful to, I don’t want to say educate people on how to approach parents who have experienced loss, but there has been dialogues where we say, you know, you probably shouldn’t say that to me. That could be very hurtful if you say it to somebody else. And I think having an open dialogue where we can shed light on stuff that is sort of appropriate and stuff that isn’t appropriate to be said to parents of loss. I think that that’s helpful.
Winter, what about you? What are your reasons for this podcast?
Winter 6:04
We actually went recently to our therapist, and one of the things that I said and I remember saying, like I said this because I was like it was, it was so shocking to me when I realized this, but when I was pregnant with my with our first child and also with Brannan, stillbirth was never on my radar. Never ever. I was so shocked and so sad, when we found out Brannan had passed away. And so I, I want this to be kind of a little bit of an awareness campaign. Like this can happen. There are some things that you can do to prevent it. We don’t know all of the reasons why stillbirth happens. So it happens. There are some things that they talk about that can help prevent it, or at least keep an eye on anything that would give you a clue that your child is in distress. So hopefully this is a little bit of awareness.
Another reason why I really wanted to start this podcast is that, as Lee and I have grieved over the last year, we have had very, I’ve come to discover that Lee has had a very different experience than I did when I gave birth to Brannan. I had feelings of joy, and obviously sadness, but feelings of joy. While as I’ve talked to Lee, and we’ve, you know, gone to therapists and such, we’ve discovered, I’ve discovered that Lee had a very different experience than I do. And he’s grieved very differently than I have this last year and still does.
And so we wanted to call out–not, not call out–I guess it’s more I wanted to show that women are different than men. We grieve differently. And I wanted the moms and the dads to share stories about their children and to give advice on their experience. Because it’s so different. Everybody’s so different. And hopefully, somebody’s advice can help you, can help somebody else in your life that is going through the same thing. And so that’s really important to me of why we formatted the show the way we have.
And then kind of the last reason that I think that I wanted to start the show, is because I felt called to do it. I was, it was kind of a nudge at first. And it was actually very early on after Brannan had passed away, it was probably within a month of his passing, and I felt like we should record this. This needs to be recorded this story, what I remember these things that happened to us, the emotions that we felt those needs to be recorded. And as the months went by, I felt, kind of, it wasn’t more of a nudge, it was kind of shoving. It was like, you need to do this.
And thankfully, Lee has been gracious enough to say yes, I want to do this, I’m happy to interview people as well, to be involved in this project. And so, so we’ve jumped in, and we’re going to do this. It’s a little bit of a daunting task, I think. I don’t know what you think, Lee, but it’s, it seems a little scary to think about…
Lee 8:53
Not just scary, but it’s going to be emotional for us too.
Winter 8:57
Yeah, it is. It really will be, I’m sure it will be. So that’s kind of why we’re doing our podcast. And we hope that we can find connection, like Lee said. We can find a place to share our stories without feeling ashamed of it or feeling like oh, we’re just going to get a pity party from other people. But it’s a way to kind of celebrate our child, a way to actually–I kind of think this is a little bonus reason why we’re doing this is that, if you haven’t been able to share your story, because people won’t talk about it with you, you can share your story and tell them that you share this story on the podcast, and they can listen to it. And they, they will get the full story. Does that make sense? I don’t know. Does that make sense? Lee?
Lee 9:39
Yeah. And does it make it makes sense that they in their own privacy could listen to your story without having to, because sometimes people can’t face–
Winter 9:49
–the discomfort.
Lee 9:50
–the discomfort. And so they don’t want to bring it up. But if you say hey, look, you know, I recorded with this podcast, and here’s my story. Then they can in their own privacy, listen to it. And it could, it could be good for you and for them.
Podcast format:
Winter 10:03
Yeah, I agree. Okay, so that brings us to a little bit about the format. So what can you expect? What can we expect whenever you tune into our podcast?
Lee 10:14
So, our podcast is going to be a little bit different than normal podcasts. We are going to be hopefully interviewing both the mothers and the fathers separately, and there’s going to be two segments to each of those interviews, there’s going to be the story. And then there’s going to be an episode about like, advice.
Winter 10:33
So what do you mean by the story?
Lee 10:35
So the story of the birth from the mother’s perspective, and from the father’s perspective. And then each of those are going to be separate episodes. And then each mother and each father is also going to have an advice episode, where they talk about this is something that really helped us, or Hey, you know, this was something that really just was not a good thing to have done. And it’s just going to be a short advice segment.
Winter 11:00
I think the goal of the advice episodes will be to help those people that have a loss mom or loss dad in their life. They can maybe get some advice from somebody that is experiencing this and, and they can help them in a meaningful way, that will help them through this tragedy.
Lee 11:16
Yeah, I do agree with that Winter. It could help them and help the people around them. So the formats are going to be an interview with, hopefully, the mother and the father. And then advice episodes from the mother and the father. And you can find these episodes on the first and the 15th of each month, no matter what day it is. It’s the first and the 15th.
Winter 11:39
That’s really weird for podcast-land. So most people do it like, We’re doing it every Tuesday and it’s going to come out at this time. We are, we decided to do the first in the 15th, because we are going to be–We could possibly be launching between two to four episodes at any given time. So, and we wanted to send it out all in one cluster. So it’s basically a “family of episodes” if you think of it that way. We’ll send out a “family of episodes” on the first and another “family’s worth of episodes” on the 15th. Just so that you can, if you want to hear the mom’s story, side of the story, great. And you can also hear the dad’s side of the story. You don’t have to wait for it to come out the next week, it’ll just all be there, so you can consume it that way.
Lee 12:20
Exactly. And in addition to their episodes being aired, each family is going to be receiving a written transcription of their episode and also an audio version of their interviews and advice episodes.
Winter 12:35
We thought this was really important because like I said, when I first, like, I felt really strongly that we should be recording these stories, so we wanted to make sure that everybody had a copy of what happened, what their birth story written down somewhere. And I don’t know if every–I think a lot of moms and dads do that. But this will be a sure way of getting that into their hands and for their family history, for their genealogy, for their future posterity to see that and to acknowledge that they had a child that passed away.
Lee 13:07
We’re also planning on trying to arrange interviews with professionals in the health community, psychology, and counselors. And we’re going to have interviews with them that will come out as well, where hopefully, we’ll be able to have some good discussion about the subject of loss and how to help each other in that loss.
Winter 13:29
Okay, so those are the, that’s going to be the general format and when they’re going to come out. One thing that we wanted to do, that’s going to be a little different and funny, at the very end of every single episode, we will have a funny quote, because we’re talking about really heavy, hard, sad stuff here. And it can be rough. So we’re going to try and end on a funny note, a lighter note, so that you have a little split second in the day that you get to laugh. Hopefully it’s funny. Lee’s going to choose them out. It’s not up to me–it’s gonna Lee. He’s just been cracking himself up over here.
Lee 14:03
I have been reading many funny quotes.
Winter 14:04
Yes, so. So make sure you stick around to the end after the credits and everything like that. There’ll be just a quick little quote at the end. So hopefully, that’ll be a little bright spot of sunshine in your day or silly spot of sunshine in your day. They’re pretty silly quotes, I’m just saying.
Lee 14:18
A good little chuckle.
Winter 14:19
Yep, exactly.
A word of caution to our listeners:
A word of warning to you, our listeners. Obviously, we’re going to be talking about birth, we’re going to be talking about death. And so, be warned that there’s going to be possible graphic descriptions about birth and maybe up the death. So we just want to put that out there.
The second thing I want to let you know about is that, because this is a very sensitive topic and really hard for a lot of people–we’re talking about hard, heavy, tough things–there are triggers everywhere. If you know that you are not in a good place. Don’t listen to our podcast. You might need some time, okay? So give yourself, respect yourself and respect where you’re at in the grieving process. Realize that this show, these episodes will be full of triggers. Because we’re going to be talking about death. We’re going to be talking about stillbirth. We’re going to be talking about little babies passing away. And that is, that’s hard.
We want you to be healthy, emotionally safe. So if you need help, go get proper help. This show is not to diagnose anything. We’re not trying to do anything like that. We’re just trying to share stories. So if you need help, get help. There are triggers. That’s all I want to say. There’s a lot of triggers in the show, so be aware.
And then the last thing is, is that these families are coming on to our show, these families that are sharing their stories, are sharing something that is near and dear to their heart. Something that is very vulnerable. That is very hard for them. It’s going to be hard. We’ve had tears on the show already.
And we ask that you, our listeners, our audience members treat these people with respect and civility. If you don’t agree with their religion, their political point of view, their whatever, the way they raise their child, whatever. Please treat our interviewees with respect. These moms and dads with respect. We will not tolerate that on any of our social media, if there’s any sort of hate or–. Any sort of hate on our social media, you will be blocked. So that’s just an invitation to be respectful and to be civil, because that’s what we expect from this audience.
How to reach us:
Anyway, Lee, where can people find us?
Lee 16:24
The most important thing to know is our website, www.StillAPartofUs.com. There will be the show notes from the interviews and advice episodes with links. If there are, if there’s need for links, you’ll be able to find it there. You’ll also be able to find our Facebook and Instagram links. And you’ll be able to sign up for our newsletter there. And if you would like to show financial support, head on over to the website, and there will be a Donate button, that will help with the production costs for this podcast.
Winter 16:52
The thing that’s going to help our podcast the most is if you subscribe to the podcast and not just listen to an episode here and there. But to actually subscribe to the podcast and to share it with someone who may need it. And tell them to subscribe to it, because that’s how people find us as if people have subscribed to our podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts. Heck, you can ask Alexa, your Google Home device to play our podcast, because it will be there, as well. So thanks for joining us for this introductory episode. Lee, thanks for being here with me. I love you.
Lee 17:25
Thanks for being with me. I love you too.
Winter 17:27
And to our audience members, our listeners, thank you so much for helping us remember our children are still a part of us.
Lee 17:33
We’ll see you on the first and 15th.
Ending quotation:
Time for the funny quote:
When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember, the fire department uses water.
Anonymous